Based on conversations after the fact, many of our clients revealed that they had been reading Investing Architect for months (and in one case, over a year) before they decided to contact us to craft and execute their real estate investing Blueprint. This surprised me a little at first.
But after giving it some thought it all started to make a lot of sense. Before you take the step to contact someone like me, you have to come to two important conclusions. First, you have to decide that investing in real estate offers the most efficient path between where you are right now and where you aim to be at retirement compared to any other asset class. Then, after considering the plethora of options in the real estate investing spectrum, you have to decide that the Blueprint method we advocate is the one that best aligns with your goals, risk profile and personality. As tall an order as that might be, the “glue” that brings it all together is trust. After you decide that you will start investing in real estate and our strategy speaks to you unlike any other, you must be able to trust that with our help you will be able to execute a plan and bring the strategy to life.
So, just in case there are some of you who might be wondering what happens after you decide to move forward with our Blueprint real estate investing strategy, I thought I’d just tell you.
The Blueprint comes first
Everyone’s combination of financial goals, capital, income and time is unique so the very first thing we do is craft your Blueprint. For this you will need to provide some answers to our questions and then we can answer your most important questions in return. Namely, we need to know:
- What is the main goal? (i.e retirement),
- What income would accomplish it? (i.e. $75,000/year)
- How long do we have to get there? (i.e 10-12 years)
- How much capital do you have saved at this moment?
- Based on your job income, what’s your savings rate? ( i.e $25,000/year)
If you don’t quite know the answers to those questions, let this be an invitation to start thinking about them. Once we have those answers, here are the major questions we can answer for you:
- How many properties you will need to acquire during your asset accumulation stage?
- How much liquid capital it will take to acquire those properties?
- How long will it take you to complete the acquisitions based on your current level of capital and your savings rate?
- How long your capital growth stage will take using just the positive cashflow from the properties?
- If that will take too long, how much you will need to contribute from your job income to pay off the properties in the time we have till retirement?
- How to allocate your porfolio between standard and premium assets based on your investment timeframe?
Financing and commitment
Now that we have our “roadmap”, we have to get ready for the trip. Before we go about the business of acquiring investment properties we connect you with our investment property specialist Lender. You aren’t obligated to use them after the pre-approval is done but after you speak with this pro you will understand why nearly 100% of our clients opt to finance their investment properties with this Lender. Once the preapproval letter has been issued, we are almost ready to start looking. Also at this stage, paperwork is drafted, reviewed and signed that establishes the client-agent relationship. We commit to help you achieve your goals and you commit to working exclusively with us.
Potential properties and acquisition
Now the fun part begins. We research hundreds of potential investment properties daily then distill that list down to about thirty contenders. At this point we run a market analysis on each property to find out what the incoming rent would be if we were to acquire it and what is the current market value for sale. What follows is an in depth cash flow analysis that projects the positive cashflow, capitalization rate and cash on cash return at Year 1. Then, it tells us how the property will perform throughout the investment timeframe and what your internal rate of return is during that time. When a property satisfies our high minimum standards and it’s a good fit for your portfolio, we will forward our research to you along with general property information and lots of photographs. After this, if you are a local investor, we would schedule a time to tour the property. Photoshop is a hell of a software so boots on the ground on every property our clients buy are mandatory. If instead you’re one of our out of state investors, we could shoot a video walkthrough of the property and send it to you. This process may take some time and will require some patience because Houston is the hottest real estate market for investors after all. But when that right property comes along, we pull the trigger and start negotiations right away. We go into those negotiations a strong pre-approved Buyer and that enhances our chances of success.
Hope that gives you an idea of what’s around the bend when you decide to move forward with your Blueprint real estate investing strategy. If there’s other questions or concerns you might have, ask away in the comments below, email me or call my cell at 713.922.2702.
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